


Mileven Drabble

by paladin_cleric_mage



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Drabble, Unfinished, super short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-22 22:53:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13176909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paladin_cleric_mage/pseuds/paladin_cleric_mage
Summary: This was headed somewhere before "My Heroes" began... I was thinking about how badly it would hurt Mike to hear what Eleven had endured during the year without him, and how he would ache knowing he wasn't there and failed to help her.





	Mileven Drabble

Words evade her like shadows. As she turns to face the light, they scatter. And she has to start again. My sister was… My sister wasn’t… Minutes pass. Until finally, the words fall from her lips, clumsy and unfamiliar. She worries she’s saying it wrong, like she worried she was playing the game wrong. A board game with counting and pieces. Hopper isn’t home yet. He signaled: late. So Mike stayed with her, helping her learn basic math.  
“My sister wanted me to kill.”  
Adrenaline rushes through Mike, wakes him up so he clings to each syllable, mentally fitting this new piece into the vast puzzle that is the year he wasn’t there for her. That is what it was. The year he failed to be there for the girl who saved his life. Will’s life. He should have been smart enough to know she was still alive, and to find her. To ride his bike daily to Hopper’s cabin and read to her, teach her things, make her laugh, call her pretty until she believes it.  
…  
How much did it hurt? He sees the sadness in her gaze, when she thinks he isn’t looking. How much danger had she put herself in? That’s the question that batters him the most. At night, when he rides home from Hopper’s cabin. When he takes care of his chores, brushes his teeth, climbs into bed. Radios her one last time to say he made it home, even though she already knows. To say he loves her. Even though she already knows.  
This, now. This is the answer to his question. He doesn’t care how long it takes, he sits across the table, watching her with wide eyes, all autonomy suspended. He doesn’t dare move, because it might shake the memories from her mind, send them running back into the distance where they hide and eat away at her.  
Mike has seen her sadness, when she thinks he isn’t looking. Eleven needs to get this out.  
…  
In his gut her words sit, bricks that knock the air from him. He feels sick. Tears arise like needles dancing behind his eyes. Why does empathy come so naturally to him? Why can’t he absorb her hurt, eradicate it forever, instead of losing himself at the thought of her alone and scared?  
…  
And he acts like it doesn’t hurt.


End file.
